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Today in History: July 3

1775 George Washington takes command of the Continental Army.

1878 John Wise flies the first dirigible in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

1901 The Wild Bunch, led by Butch Cassidy, commits its last American robbery near Wagner, Montana, taking $65,000 from a Great Northern train.

1903 The first cable across the Pacific Ocean is spliced between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila.

1950 U.S. carrier-based planes attack airfields in the Pyongyang-Chinnampo area of North Korea in the first air-strike of the Korean War.

1954 Food rationing ends in Great Britain almost nine years after the end of World War II.

1962 Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.


Born on July 3

1883 Franz Kafka, Prague-born German novelist (The Metamorphosis, The Trail).

1912 Elizabeth Taylor, novelist and short story writer.


Joke of the Day

A chemist walks into his shop to find a man leaning against the wall.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asks his assistant. “He came in for some cough syrup,” the assistant explains “but I couldn’t find any, so I sold him a bottle of laxatives instead”. “What?!” the chemist says, horrified. “You can’t treat a cough with laxatives!” “Of course you can,” the assistant declares. “Look at him - he’s far too scared to cough.”